BLUETOOTH™ is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances to create personal area networks (PANs) with high levels of security. BLUETOOTH is a layered protocol architecture consisting of multiple different protocols. One of the protocols is a Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) that allows a device to discover services (BLUETOOTH profiles) that are supported by other devices.
Bluetooth profiles (services) define possible applications and specify general behaviors that Bluetooth enabled devices use to communicate with other Bluetooth devices. These profiles include settings to parameterize and to control the communication.
Bluetooth uses a process called pairing, where two devices need to be paired to communication with each other. Pairing mechanisms include legacy pairing and Secure Simple Pairing (SSP), where SSP is supported in Bluetooth v2.1 and greater. SSP includes a number of modes of operation of “just works”, “numeric comparison”, passkey entry”, and “out of band (OOB)”.
With respect to an OOB methodology for devices utilizing the Bluetooth protocol, it has been proposed that pairing between host and peripheral devices can be facilitated using “Near Field Communication (NFC)” OOB technology. However, a known implementation of NFC in device pairing requires an initial discovery and authentication procedure utilizing propagating electromagnetic radio waves (e.g., signals exchanged between BLUETOOTH transceivers). Known NFC pairing also requires a keypad on the host device for a user to initiate the pairing procedure, such as through the use of a menu. An example of a proposed NFC pairing is the “Near Field Communication (NFC) interface and Protocol” (NFCIP-1) by EMCA.